Alas, it took the RIAA five years and 35,000 cases to realize that suing individual for illegal downloads was not an effective deterrent. Not only was it an abject PR failure, not even the RIAA has ever pretended that it was making a difference.

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That's not to say the RIAA is not entirely out of the anti-pirate game, of course. Now, they will focus on notifying your ISP of your malfeasances, should their wide net of semi-legal piracy detection agents sniff out your IP seeding 808s and Heartbreak to 12 year old girls. The RIAA will email your ISP (if it is one of the "major" providers that has an agreement), who will then either forward the email on or send their own warning. If you don't comply to that and subsequent warnings, your service may be canned. [WSJ]